Wonderful red and gold leaf colours...
I love being a busy autumn gardener, surrounded by wonderful red and gold leaf colours. The days are peaceful, the nights are cosy - such a well-balanced time of the year...
Autumn Water Race
Friday 20th April
Hee hee. Non-Gardening Partner is away in Sydney, so I had my breakfast watching Miss Marple on TV (felt rather decadent). But it makes good gardening sense to wait until the sun is up and the outside temperature is warmer. I'll take my dog for a walk and then I'll contemplate my day.
New Dahlia
Much, Much Later...
I've been rebuilding the little stone retaining wall along the Dog-path Garden's water edge - making it higher and stronger, and back-filling the gaps with compost. It all looks rather nice, and will be a beautiful garden feature to enjoy in winter. At the moment the autumn trees are dominating the water with their brilliant colours.
A home-made yummy scrummy pizza is cooking and I'm drinking a wine and fruit juice mixture, warm toes tingling, feeling very, very pleased with myself and my day. Some rewards for a great day's work - a Salvia apiana (possibly), and a bag of Canna glauca rhizomes (the species that Cannas are hybridized from), brought round by my plantsman friend. Lucky!
Saturday 21st April
My goodness my toes are cold and numb! I've been sloshing around in the water fixing another part of the Dog-Path Garden's waterside stone retaining wall. It's been a very satisfying, modular job - apart from cold feet. I just fit the stones roughly on top of each other, leaning in slightly, fatties and heavies on the bottom.
Gardener in Water Race
Me and Winston...
Didn't Winston Churchill enjoy making stone walls? His were probably free-standing dry-stone, Yorkshire style.
Then I trimmed the big bronze Phormium, dug out some Ligularias and a bonsai Gunnera - a little self-seeded sweetie, with delightfully miniature green leaves. It grows into such a monster, hee hee. And I have learnt the hard way - remove when small.
Non-Gardening Partner appeared and took some action photographs, which seemed to feature the Moosey bottom rather than anything else. But busy gardeners don't have time to turn around, wipe the mud off their faces, and pose wistfully. Not when their feet are really, really cold.
Sunday 22nd April
Lots of things are happening. Escher the big (bigger) brown puppy-dog is coming for a country visit. I have one more little stretch of Dog-Path Garden stone wall to fix up. And then I'm packing for my big three day hiking (tramping) trip.
My Hiking Boots :- Many of my previous hiking trips have web-pages, where you can join me.
On a private track, where the big overnight packs arrive by magic at the hut, one can put (for example) three large hardback books in ones pack. This is terribly exciting, as it means I can take Francis Pryor with me (explanation - British archaeologist, great writer) as well as some 'lighter' reading.
Right. This morning I am playing chamber music - time for some Bach practice. And I've found THE most absolutely gorgeousest (?) Schumann piano sonata, which I'm also thundering delicately through. I've met Schumann so awfully late in my pianistic life that his dynamics confuse me. Hence the delicate thundering...
Much Later...
After two wet, cold hours in the water race another piece of stone wall is done. This time the dog-path itself was dangerously sloping down towards the water, so I had to level its surface, and start the new wall a whole stone's depth lower. I kept thinking I'd run out - of energy, maybe, but never of river stones.
Goodbye to My Garden
Goodbye for Four Days
That's enough gardening for today. So it's time to say goodbye. I'll be absent from the Moosey Garden and journal for four whole days. I'm hiking the Awatere Tussock Track, in inland Marlborough. Take care, and be extra good while I'm gone. Don't drop all your leaves, or go to seed...